In college, students can explore new possibilities

YOUR VIEW

August 30, 2010

This month more than 3,300 18-year-olds will be starting at private colleges and thousands more at the state schools and community colleges in the Lehigh Valley. Hundreds more from the Lehigh Valley are leaving home for freshman years at other institutions around the country. This advice is for them — and those who care about them.

As freshmen, you have arrived on campus, fully formed, intellectually mature, with impeccable values and perfect judgment. Just kidding.

You are not in college because you already know everything you need to know but because you are unfinished. You are in college to open your eyes (and more importantly) your mind to new experiences, new people, new ideas, new belief systems, even new values. Of course, this goes entirely against human nature.

Research by anthropologists, behavioral and developmental psychologists, neuroscientists and other scholars has demonstrated that human beings are quick to form groups and that groups, once formed, are inclined to be exclusionary (if not openly hostile) toward non-group members. Some researchers have cited linguistic evidence from various tribes whose word for "human being" is synonymous with "members of the tribe"; while the word for non-tribe members is synonymous with the words for "prey" or "food."

Inevitably you will have grown up thinking about yourself as a member of one or more large groups. Some of you have joined as a matter of choice: You are a Yankees fan or a Phillies fanatic; you are a Republican or a Democrat. Some affiliations are superficial and subject to revision as your tastes and interests evolve: You like rap, or heavy metal, or baroque organ music; you are a chocolate lover, or you prefer vanilla or caramel; perhaps you belong to the tribe of those who hate peas.

But some groups — particularly those linked to your family background — have already shaped you profoundly. You are white, or black, or Asian, or Hispanic, or of some other race or ethnicity; you are Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu or Buddhist. These affiliations have probably molded your perceptions of what is beautiful or disgusting, profane or sacred, flattering or insulting, logical or irrational, delicious or inedible, normal or perverse. These perceptions have been fundamental coping mechanisms, enabling you to live within the norms of your "tribe" without giving offense to other members of your community.

There is another side to this tribal coin. Not only do we self-identify as members of particular groups, but we are quick to classify and categorize the people we encounter as well, often on the basis of fleeting impressions and shockingly superficial evidence. Sometimes this can be helpful. Let's say you are lost in Rome. Do you seek directions from the slim, dark-haired man leaning against his Vespa or from the portly red-head wearing a fanny pack and an "I-Heart- New York" T-shirt? The stereotyping instinct is decidedly unhelpful, though, when your objective is to join a new and open-minded campus community.

In college you will live with, work with, argue with, and perhaps even fall in love with people whose norms and worldviews are very different from your own.

This is extremely hard work. You are already in an unfamiliar place, with unfamiliar people, and unfamiliar expectations. You have every right to be anxious — and it is normal for anxious people to retreat into the reassuring womb of those deeply embedded certainties with which your upbringing has equipped them.

But this is what you must not do. Because to embrace certainties is to reject possibilities, and college is all about possibilities. College is also all about questions. Asking them, debating them, reframing them, and asking them again.

And the biggest, most important question of all is this: Who are you, and who will you be? You may be quite sure of what you want to do in college and where you want to go thereafter. You may be clueless — the classic "undecided freshman." Either is OK as long as you keep asking questions and keep looking for answers.

Freshman year is a time to sample, to taste-test, to try on for size, to stretch yourself: working harder than you've ever worked; considering strange ideas with an open mind; engaging with people who are as different from you as possible; juggling as wide a variety of interests, friends, and activities as you can possibly manage, while constantly assessing what works — and doesn't work — for you.

What is not OK is if you don't know or don't care why you're in college, or if you are actually there against your will. Success in college is not about certainty; it is not even about knowing what you want to do. But it is very much about wanting to find out. Good luck and God speed!

Peyton R. Helm is president of Muhlenberg College. This essay was adapted from his opening convocation speech on Sunday.